Chapter 1. Man and the World in God-Given Beauty and Harmony. Human Nature; the Beauty of the Soul and Body of Man

How many times has the sun risen and set over you and for you in the sky, or the bright moon circled above you, and the wondrous face of countless stars adorned the firmament of heaven for you, while the earth, every year in spring and summer, clothed itself before your astonished eyes in varied plant greenery, in flowers, and the trees were covered with countless delicious fruits? How many varied, countless living creatures of different kinds has your eye seen and does it still see—creatures endowed by the Creator with different wondrous properties? Do you ponder this wondrous order of creation, established by the creative hand and, though silent, visibly teaching you order in your own life and thanksgiving and praise to your Creator, who has called you to a rational, active life? And has not the beauty and variety of every creature, animate and inanimate, on earth, captivated you many times over: animals, birds, insects, and creeping things, and especially the variety and multitude of races, tribes, and peoples inhabiting the globe; the variety of languages and dialects, with which, as with an outward form, the Creator clothed the invisible, rich, varied thought of man, and by means of which He taught people to understand one another and to open the inward, spiritual world of human thought, of feelings of gratitude, wonder, love, and praise to the Creator?!! Honored by the Creator with reason and freedom, furnished by Him with an inward and an outward law—do you make use of them for your own true good and for the Creator’s glory; do you use reason, freedom for good, conscience, and the clear, wise commandments of your Creator? And if you do not use them as you ought, then why? Do you not sin senselessly against yourself and against your Creator—and what do you deserve for your thoughtlessness, your inattention, your lack of reflection, and your disobedience?

Man, for whom is this wondrous, unchanging order, this order of nature, this order of heaven and earth? This harmonious course of the sun, the moon, and the stars? These changes of spring, summer, autumn, and winter? For whom is this endless variety and abundance of the fruits of the earth, with their countless pleasant tastes? For whom is this sunlight, so life-giving in its joy and fruitfulness? For whom is this life-giving air, often full of the wondrous fragrance of plants? For whom is this element of water, quenching your thirst, cleansing your impurities, and wondrously turned by the Creator into the countless juices of the fruits of the earth; falling abundantly upon the earth to bring forth every kind of fruit, of which there is no number for their multitude and variety—and the beautiful, fragrant flowers that adorn the earth and your gardens? For whom are the domestic animals, for whom the abundance of every kind of fish—great and small—of feathered birds, delighting your ear with their pleasant song and glorifying the Creator of creatures, or prepared to satisfy your hunger or appetite as food? For whom are the metals, the minerals, the precious stones? Is it not for you, O man, king of the creatures of the earth? Is it not you who make use of all this wealth of nature for benefit, for pleasure, for riches, for luxury? Is it not for you that all this wondrous order of nature exists, this wondrous order, this harmony of all creation? And if all the wealth of creation is for you, this wondrous order, this harmony, and you make use of it for your own good and contentment, then why do you break the commandments of the Creator, given you for your own good and blessedness; why do you break the order of nature and allow countless disorders in your own life, and establish upon the earth groaning and sorrow without end? Were you created for this? For reason has been given you, and conscience, and the commandments of the Creator, that you might freely fulfill them and be blessed! What punishments do you not deserve for your lawlessness, for your ingratitude, for your thoughtlessness, your negligence, your laziness, your malice!

You see this wondrous harmony, or concord, this order of creatures great and small throughout the whole universe, this wondrous order of all creation, established by the laws of the Creator: be, then, yourself in harmony, in concord with the eternal, all-wise, and righteous laws of the all-good Creator, laid down for you before your own creation and that of the human race; be in harmony with your own conscience, with other people—in all that concerns the eternal laws of God. And you will be blessed here and in eternity.

I thank You, O Lord, sovereign, all-wise, magnificent, most beautiful, almighty Creator and Maker of all creatures, who made all and everything with astonishing splendor and delightful beauty, and especially the crown of earthly creatures—man, and, still more, her who was made from his rib! You made all things pure, beautiful, fitting, undefiled… But grant us the grace to look, purely, undefiled, without sin, upon all Your works, and upon the most beautiful work of Your hands—man; to love You, the Maker, with all our heart, to cling to You, to be enraptured by You, to love You with all our heart, with all our soul!

In all creation, rational and irrational, animate and inanimate, a strict fitness, precision, peacefulness, purity, and perfection is to be seen, and through this the well-being and wholeness of creatures is achieved. In man these qualities have been implanted by the Creator with a special privilege, as in the rational crown of creatures, to whom all visible earthly creatures are subject, and he, as a rational being, ought especially to submit willingly, rationally, freely, and diligently to these laws of the Creator for his own well-being; and so, O man, be meek, humble, good, merciful, compassionate, obedient, self-restrained, chaste, patient, devoted to the Creator of creation with your whole being, continually, your whole life long, that you may inherit eternal life with God in the heavens.

I thank You, O Lord, that You have endowed and honored me with mind and word, having made me a rational, verbal, and free being, self-determining in life and action, capable of exalted, holy thoughts and feelings that quicken me, that understand Your own—having a lofty purpose of life.

Man is a god, and man is nothing. I said: you are gods, and all are sons of the Most High (Ps 81:6). If I have not love, I am nothing (1Cor 13:2). God is love; man is created in the image of God, with a soul that loves its own archetype—God—and him who bears that image—man. The morning star, having freely become the devil—the source of malice and envy, of every sinful delusion—has perverted the loving being, man, through disobedience to God, and made him like himself.

Beautiful, truly divine in the beginning of its creation, was human nature, afterward fallen and corrupted. The beautiful, uncreated, hypostatic Word of God Himself, at the end of the ages, was pleased to take upon Himself our human nature, sin excepted, and dwelt among men for thirty-three and a half years, bore our infirmities, lived on earth, showing to all an example of a righteous life; went about, preached to all the true, heavenly teaching, endured reproaches, mockery, blows; suffered, died on the cross, and rose again in His humanity, and ascended once more into heaven with a flesh made spiritual and immortal, and will come again to earth to judge the living and the dead. With what reverence, then, ought people to regard their own nature, redeemed from sin, from the curse, and from death, sanctified and strengthened, enlightened, exalted, and deified by the grace of God, by the word of God, and by the Mysteries! How we ought to guard ourselves from every worldly mingling, every defilement (passion) of flesh and spirit; in what holiness we ought to live, in what mutual love! (2Cor 7:1).

God’s intention concerning you, O man, concerning your life of soul and body, is always unchanging and unalterable: and the purpose for which you were created—with soul and body: remember for what you were given mind and reason, heart, will, memory, the capacity to picture, to imagine things and persons not present, or seas, lakes, rivers, valleys, cities, and the rest; remember with what intention the Creator granted you your senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch; for what He gave you eyes, lips, tongue, hands, feet, the organs of generation, from which rational being is granted to creatures like yourself; remember the purpose of all the outward and inward organs of the human body, wisely, fittingly, purely, undefiled, and graciously made, and use all your faculties, all your bodily organs and senses, to the glory of God, wisely, fittingly, in measure, in season, purely, without mockery, without irritating them immoderately, unlawfully, contrary to the intention and will of your Creator—and for the wise ordering of your earthly life you will receive a long and prosperous life on earth, and a life eternally blessed in the heavens.

The human soul was created in the image and likeness of God—the highest honor and dignity: holiness and light, rightness, simplicity, goodness, prayer, a fervent love for God were innate in it; God Himself dwelt in the first humans before their shameful and ruinous fall; the Holy Spirit adorned them, enlightened them, comforted them. Through the fall the soul was utterly changed: it became sinful, dark, cunning, self-loving rather than God-loving, given to the pleasure of the flesh, proud, evil, envious, disobedient, unloving, greedy for gain, lustful. But repentance has been granted to it, as to one deceived and plundered by the devil, the fallen murderer of mankind; and it can rise up in brightness from its own fall, by the grace and mercies of God.

Repentant brothers and sisters! I turn your attention to the nature and qualities of our soul: our soul is an immortal spirit, created by God in His own image and likeness. And God is boundless righteousness, truth, and beauty beyond words. And the human soul ought to be wholly righteous, truthful, and not false, not hypocritical; wholly beautiful, as the Godhead is beautiful, which made every creature wisely and beautifully. But it has disfigured and corrupted itself extremely through sin, and given itself over to temporal and eternal death; and it could have remained, and can remain, so forever, had the Lord who made us not had mercy on us, and saved us by His own sufferings and His own death; had He not planted on earth, for our enlightenment, cleansing, sanctification, and salvation, His Holy Church, giving her shepherds and every saving Mystery and divine service, every gracious means of salvation. We are members of this Church; we are the rational sheep of this holy and chosen flock; we must live in a manner worthy of our own high calling.

The beauty of the human soul consists in: sincere and true faith, prayer, meekness, humility, freedom from malice, submission, obedience, goodness, freedom from hypocrisy, simplicity, self-restraint, purity, chastity, patience, willing service to one’s neighbors in righteousness and truth, and a perfect, self-denying love and devotion to God. Righteous souls will shine like the sun in the kingdom of heaven, so beautiful will they be. Read the lives of the saints, and see how beautiful their souls were. Sins and passions disfigure and defile the soul: pride, self-conceit, cunning, self-love, self-pity, anger, malice, irritability, envy, greed for gain, attachment to earthly things, love of possessions, ambition, intemperance, gluttony, laziness, cunning, insincerity, coldness toward God and neighbor, lustful desires, and every kind of fornication.

The soul of man is wide and deep. The heart of man is deep beyond all things, and who can search it out? It is like a deep river, pure, or impure, or like a deep lake, or a foul swamp, in which every kind of creeping thing lives.

Everything Your hands have made, O Lord, is pure, beautiful, fitting, undefiled, well suited to its use and its action, foreordained in the thoughts of our Creator, Maker, and God—and especially the body of man, of man and woman, this wondrously beautiful and pure temple of the Godhead. Do you not know, it is said, that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you, whom you have from God, and are not your own? (1Cor 6:19) Do you not know that you are a temple of God and the Spirit of God lives in you? (1Cor 3:16) Why, then, does it appear to man an occasion of temptation and an incitement to sin—especially the body of woman, this living, beautiful workshop-chamber, in which, by the wisdom of the Creator, the truly wondrous, most wise, and beautiful organism of the human body is conceived and built—this chamber, to which all of us owe our life and our own bodily temple, in which our immortal, rational soul dwells, which is to glorify eternally its Creator, who has granted us rational being and shown us His own world—heaven and earth, with all that is in them—to the glory of His holy Name; this chamber, through which we do so much that is useful, necessary, and beautiful in our life together!

The enemy, through depraved people, casts feminine allurements before the eyes of all, without any modesty or caution; feminine nakedness, in every seductive and fanciful form, is printed in many magazines. Today I tore up a page from one such magazine, on which this tempting nakedness was depicted. But did the Lord create the body of woman so magnificently for the sake of temptation? Is she not our own sacred thing, our praise and our honor? Is this not our common human blindness? Ought not everyone to revere the works of the Creator’s hands—the most pure works of most pure hands? Do we have respect for ourselves, for our own person? Do we forget whose handiwork we are? The crown of whose creation, and of what Creator? Holy servants and handmaids of God, holy men and women and virgins of every age and every people, who honored their own nature by a virtuous life and shone on earth and in heaven with the brightness and holiness of their own living—come, expose the frivolous men and women of our own time, grown wild through their passions, feeding on their own temptations and lusts and disgracing human nature! Proclaim to them the fearsome judgment of God for the trampling and defiling of their own temples, not made with hands, and preserve those not yet corrupted from the corruption now threatening them through the free and shameless press of our own day! The blame lies with the milieu—the domestic, the social, the public—in which it is not customary to have or to read the Word of God; where only worldly, vain reading is customary, and only worldly conversation is carried on, for whatever a person is rich in, that he shares in conversation.

Every part of the human body, like every part of every living creature, planted according to the reason and will of the all-good, all-wise, most pure Maker, the Lord God, is fitting and holy, pure, undefiled, necessary to the being and well-being of people and animals, and also to their adornment and splendor. Everything the Lord made is very good.

Here, before my eyes, is a picture of the most beautiful naked women in the most seductive poses. The passionate flesh grows agitated, is roused to lust, is inflamed by desire. But spiritual reasoning says: why, O foolish flesh, are you agitated? Be calm: glorify the Creator at the sight of this wondrous beauty, this marvelous form of the human body, for in it are displayed the wisdom, the goodness, the beauty, the majesty of the Maker and Creator, who made such a body holy, pure, fitting, undefiled, incorruptible—not for temptation, but for pure, righteous, honorable, holy use, and for the glorifying of the Creator.

For the body of woman is an artist’s model for you, O man, prepared so that, according to this artistic, most wise, beautiful pattern, you yourself might be formed—you who are tempted by your own body, in its very essence; for in such a body, as in an artist’s workshop, your own body too, whether of a man or a woman, was cast or woven. When I reflected on this within myself, every lust vanished. I became calm, and was no longer in the least tempted by the naked body of a woman, but glorified the Lord, who has made all things with wisdom.

What a close bond there is between man, his physical nature, and all visible nature! In winter, thaws or frosts, snows or storms, clear days or foul weather, are foreknown in the body. Before storms, before snow, the teeth or the head ache, or a pain is felt at times in the side; and in spring, summer, and autumn, before winds and rains—especially north winds—one feels it heavily. But in still, clear, fair weather one feels well, light, cheerful. Through nature the Lord both punishes and shows us mercy.